MØ shouts a lot. She swears a lot. She says “fuck” or “fucking” in every phrase, but it's not anger. It's passion. It's also the result of a language barrier. The Danish alt-popstar is sheepish about her so-called “Danglish.” There may be other expletives or adjectives in her mother tongue, but in her second language she keeps it consistent by giving all the fucks. When there isn't a word to describe what she's trying to say she makes sounds instead: ARG! WARGH! EYAHHHHH! Followed by: “You know what I mean?” You do know what she means. Just as a pop song can boil extreme emotions down into a swift three minutes and thirty seconds, MØ can tell you precisely where her heart is with one noise. She's ready to explode, like a teenager in the throes of rebellion.
Today her heart is bright. In the basement of a Los Angeles hotel, she's reaping the benefits of a year-best ten hours of sleep. “Ugh, it was wonderful. I woke up so happy,” she says, taking a seat. She's arriving from New York, where she's been prepping the release of her second solo LP, Forever Neverland. It's a pop album brimming with thick beats and tropical electronics. It’s far more minimal than MØ's previous record—2014’s No Mythologies to Follow, which was packed with 808s and multi-layered vocals. But in its murkier R&B tones and her more naked vocal, it amplifies her prior reputation as a non-obvious songwriting decision-maker. “I think it's nice that you say it's pop,” she remarks. “I'm scared it's too weird.”
In 2018, pop is weird though, particularly the scene MØ associates with. Earlier this year at BBC Radio 1, MØ performed alongside Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Zara Larsson, and ALMA. The latter trio especially are examples of rule-defiers who are more extreme in their approach than the industry can catch up to. Like them, MØ's built an audience as a featured vocalist (with Snakehips, Cashmere Cat, SOPHIE, Noah Cyrus, Iggy Azalea), lending her more fire power when releasing solo material to a ready-made streaming fanbase. She nods her feathered hair at this. “In my heart I believe that the best pop is the weird stuff,” she says. “Cardi B is punk as fuck. When she came up people said, That'll never be a hit.”
“Punk as fuck” is MØ’s history. For ten years, she was an activist. Her best friend Josephine Pedersen formed punk duo Mor with her. Their EP title translates to Pussy In Your Face. When her solo project took off in 2012, she was sired pop's new alternative, a label that made her squirm. “I didn't fit the mold of a popstar,” she admits. “You wanna be with the popular kids but I'm a bad actor.” Today MØ looks unrecognizable from the braided character who first gained traction in 2012. “[Sometimes] I felt like I needed to put on that dress instead of those pants, or color my hair this instead of that. Whatever,” she scoffs. “If I'm not myself it's not gonna work.”
To her surprise, MØ has snuck in her agenda. Naked emotion is what pop is about. MØ is immediately open. She utters “I'm scared” 24 times over our two hours together but can never pinpoint from where the fear comes from. “A fear of not being good enough?” she asks. “But that’s what drives me.” If you want a Billboard 100 success, you'd be a fool for not collaborating with MØ. Take Major Lazer’s hit “Lean On”—the ninth most watched video on YouTube. It was MØ's big break in 2015. “Blow a kiss! Fire a gun! We all need somebody to lean on,” she crackles. Her words don't necessarily add up but she makes you feel something. A year later, Diplo and MØ reconvened on “Cold Water” with help from Justin Bieber for an even more monstrous hit. MØ's M.O., however, is not that of a hitmaker.
For one, she refuses to move to Los Angeles; the nucleus of producers and songwriters. “My apartment is officially in Copenhagen,” she laughs. L.A. is where she recorded Forever Neverland and is the proverbial Neverland. “Should I move here?” she asks. “Probably. I'm scared of losing myself to this bubble. I'll just be another fish in the pond. It's my own life crisis.”
MØ is unwilling to compromise her roots. “I've always liked the idea of being different,” she nods. “But I'm also scared of being a pussy.” The song “West Hollywood” on the album contains the line: “All I wanna do is just call up my mom / and get my ass out of West Hollywood.” L.A. becomes unpalatable for her whenever fast friendships go stale. “It makes you feel at home quickly.” She frowns. “Sometimes I feel even more alienated.” L.A. sucks when she’s surrounded by music-makers emulating trends. “Why would I strive to do something that's already there? People don't wanna see the same thing! I wanna make people understand me or something.” She laughs at her need for validation. “I wanna showcase who the fuck I am.”
Who the fuck is MØ? She was born Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen in the suburbs of Funen, Denmark, and she wanted more. “I was so fucking terrible at trying to fit in,” she giggles. “When I started wearing black clothes everyone thought I'd gone mentally ill.”
Her household was so harmonious she had to create drama. “I always had a temper,” she says. There were no artists in her midst. Her parents—both teachers—still don’t have context for her pop-stardom. “They're interested in the fucking mission to mars,” she says. “When I met Rihanna they didn't care. They think it's great if I think it's great.”
Hometown life was innocent. On new single “Sun In Our Eyes,” she talks about stealing liquor—she'd shoplift beer and wine, or nick her parents stash. On the song “Nostalgia,” she sings about having to use her mom's phone to contact a boyfriend. “It was pathetic.” She was 11. His name was Anders. “It was my first love. We never kissed! We'd play cards and go for bike rides. It was so clean.” He broke up with her. “I was always the one getting dumped,” she says, shrugging.
That song's verses are almost spoken word, and they’re inspired by Sonic Youth who changed MØ's teenage life. (Previously it was the Spice Girls—“I remember asking the teachers: Can I be like the Spice Girls one day if I work hard?”) She was 14 and transfixed by her brother's punk friend. “My brother was a super nerd but his friend had black hair, makeup and a leather coat. I was like, 'HE IS THE COOLEST IN THE WORLD. FUCK!'” She dyed her hair black, switched her wardrobe, and moved to a city school.
There she learned about left-wing activism and punk shows. In high school she had a band called The Edmunds. (Their material is still on a fan Tumblr.) “I was super into it. I wanted to be a rockstar,” she says. She made a solo LP, A Piece Of Music To Fuck To (again, on Tumblr), about a boy who dumped her for another girl. It sounded like Peaches, Uffie, and M.I.A. Soon after, she and Josephine forged Mor.
“Those years were the best: her and me,” she says, wistfully. They toured squats all over Scandinavia, France, and Germany. “We were from the fucking countryside. We became popular on a very underground level. I was so proud. I miss it.”
Mor was an avenue in which MØ could put her personal anxieties aside. It was about release and rage. “We'd go crazy with our bodies,” she says. “At the same time I was hungry to show who I was. I was scared: What if people think I'm fucking lame for being sensitive?” When MØ's solo project began to gain pace there was no room to do both. “I remember Josephine saying: 'Karen, fuck you. Just tell me that you don't have enough time.' I really wanted to have time. ”
In August, MØ turned 30. At the time, she was perplexed by people's concerns for her. “Wow you're a woman now and a popstar. How do you feel about that?” she mimics. It fed her stress. “Fuck! Youth is over. Or is it? I'm feeling bummed out. I'm not scared of getting wrinkles. I'm scared this playfulness will be suppressed.”
Forever Neverland is a reference to Peter Pan syndrome. Age is still a hindrance for women in pop—really, in any realm. “In Danish we call it alder racisme: age racism.” In the age of social media, we're occupied with escapism, every millisecond. “We put a filter on reality. In music it's all about being young, fresh, hip, famous, all that shit.” She sighs. “It affects me.”
The Peter Pan-ing runs deeper than societal exclusion. MØ says she needs her childlike quirks for inspiration. We talk about Patti Smith and Bjork (“the fucking queen”). We note how sometimes they're misrepresented as “childlike” when in fact they're uninhibited by a need to be pure while also ageing gracefully. It temporarily calms her.
Time, however, has been ticking. Forever Neverland is coming out four years after her last. (An EP bridged the gap last year.) It's been frustrating. Never-ending tours were a major distraction. A monkey on her back told her she had to write a hit of her own to break free of features. “I don't regret searching for that,” she offers. She had a “luxury” problem: “After 'Lean On,' everything was a possibility, and I got lost.” For someone who doesn't believe in genre limitation it became overwhelming searching for a cohesive sound. “I needed someone to unify this shit.” Cue producer Stint. He organized her jumbled mind, finishing ideas.
The record is jammed with guests: from Empress Of (“a badass”) to Charli XCX (“warm, fun and embracing”) to Diplo. The first time MØ met Diplo, she shut down. “I was a big Major Lazer fan. 'Get Free' was my jam.” The connection came after she mentioned him in a U.K. publication. One fan tweeted at Diplo. Diplo tweeted back. “Then I got a heart attack,” she laughs. They met at a session in Amsterdam in 2013. She obsessively wrote over the beats they made. Before long “Lean On” arrived.
She hears that song everywhere. Same with “Cold Water.” They're her hits, after all. “OH MY GOD THEY'RE FUCKING AMAZING!” she screams, in case there was any niggling doubt that she feels defined by other people's songs. For a while, MØ had to align her politics with her ambition. “I am especially sensitive because of my background. I wanna do a commercial but I wanna be sure I'm being myself. If you get to a point in the mainstream where you're allowed to be yourself then you can push the world forward with your art.”
MØ admits to having “stupid childish dreams” of the future. A tattoo of 10 cents on her wrist is a reminder. She got it in Glasgow. “My cartoon obsession is Donald Duck,” she says, talking the quacking creature up like he's a real person. “You know his rich uncle Scrooge McDuck is from Glasgow? He earned his first dime there.” MØ asked for a one dime tattoo. The concerned tattooist pointed out that it would look like an ode to One Direction. They converted it to cents. “That dime inspired Scrooge McDuck to seek his dreams,” she smiles. She says it with as much conviction as a young child; a child that shows no signs of leaving MØ behind any time soon.
